Week 24

Changes! My companion is staying here in Valdivia, but I'm going to Calbuco! Calbuco is apparently a small island and a small town south of Valdivia. I`m super excited because I've heard it`s super pretty down there! Also, Elder Gonzalez is going to be my companion and this is going to be his last 6 weeks in the mission! He`s from Santiago and only speaks Spanish so my Spanish is definitely going to improve a lot faster because I'll be forced to speak it all the time. I`m super excited!

After all this time of being in Chile and speaking Spanish, I realized MY DREAMS ARE IN SPANISH!! It`s so funny. I never thought that would happen ha-ha.

On another note, we did like 12 or 13 hours of service this week. We helped some members paint their house, which took like 7 hours, then we helped people haul a bunch of firewood for about 3 hours and then helped an old lady with her yard for a couple hours. It`s always fun to give service like that here in the mission because it`s a nice change in the routine.

This week we taught a lot of people, and I'm super sad to be leaving Valdivia because we have a lot of investigators that I believe are going to be baptized soon. We have Peter and Aly, Benjamin and Nicole, Victor, Ximena, Daniella, Sebastian, Francisco, Javier, Heladio, and more. A lottt of investigators. It`s ok though, i hope there will be even more people waitng for me in Calbuco!

This week for p-day, we hiked a small mountain by our house, it was pretty relaxing because that`s what i always used to do back home, Hiking! Also, there area was almost the same as Seattle so it felt exactly like home. Here`s a couple pictures from that hike and more!

Everything`s great down here in Chile, thanks for your support everyone! I`m glad to be down here sharing the gospel and the Book of Mormon because i know it`s true and can help everyone. 

Byeeee

Elder Pollock




They don`t sell milk by the gallon here, it sucks! It comes in boxes and tastes weird.

 Also, here`s the coke section of the grocery store. Chileans love their coke. Seriously though, they drink it like every day



Week 23

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!!!!

Unfortunately, they don`t celebrate that here in Chile so i`m a little sad about that.

We just had a super cool activity that we`ve been planning for a while, and it turned out super good! It was a role play of the Plan of Salvation. We all started in the chapel, which was was all decorated in white, and that was the ¨pre-earth life¨ and we reviewed the Plan of Salvation. Afterwards, we all passed through a curtain ¨Veil of forgetfullness¨ Into the Gym. When we were in the gym, We had games like bobbing for apples, watching mormon messages, kareoke, question booth, sock toss, etc. In these activities, you can earn tickets. I was in charge of the prize table, which consisted of cookies, bananna bread, brownies, juice, soda, fruit, etc. With their tickets, the people could buy these prizes, or they could save their tickets. At one point in time, we turned off the lights and we all ¨Died¨ and went to the judgement room. Depending on how many tickets the people had, they were assigned a kingdom of glory, Celestial, Terrestral, or telestial. It was a super cool and informational activity. Everyone liked it.

We are teaching a family of 6 and we`re super excited for them. They always give us food when we come over too, so that means they must be a good family haha. They get along with eachother super well, they listen to our message, and they realy participate in the lessons. Here in the mission, we call people like this ¨golden Investigators¨

Another cool thing we`ve been doing is we`re teaching these 2 twins, about 10 years old, english. They only missed one point on their last exam. It`pretty fun to teach them. Their family isn`t part of the church, neither are the twins, but they are recently starting to open up to us and share their beliefs and now they let us teach them about the gospel too!

On another note, for this P-day we went to the beach! It was super fun and very similar to the beaches in seattle. We played sand football, took pictures, hiked, climbed rocks, explored, ate pizza, etc.

Pictures to follow!

Being a missionary is awesome, thanks to everyone for getting me here!

Elder Pollock

Week 22-Russel M. Nelson

This week Russell M. Nelson, one of the twelve apostles, talked with us on wednesday! It was awesome and super spiritual. We had to wake up at 4:00 in the Morning to take a 3 hour bus ride to Osorno to get there before 9:00. All the missionaries in the Chile Osorno mission, like 250, gathered in the Osorno Stake  Center.

Elder Nelson has been my favorite apostol for a long time because he was a heart surgeon and that is my dream job. That, or Orthopedic Surgeon. I have tons of respect for him because not only did he have incdredible worldy honors, like being a heart surgeon, but he is also an incredible spiritual leader.

There are a lot of things to say about what he told us, but the thing i like most about what he told us is he promised us if we are obedient and do everything we can to be good missionaries, we will have more blessings in our family and our future family then we could have had in any other manner. 

One thing that was super funny this week was a member asked us to cut some of the carpet out of his house because it was ripped and it looked bad, so we did. He thanked us, and right before we were about to leave his wife comes out of her room, sees the carpet, and starts yelling at him for like 20 mintues! Apparently he never asked her if he could cut the carpet out Hahaha we just sat there and waited for her to stop yelling. After she stopped yelling, she stomped off into her room and before we had the chance to get up and leave, she came back and started yelling at him again for something! It was fun

The missionaries in our neighboring ward had a baptism so we went there on saturday. It was a great baptism service and the kid was super awesome. He`s only 18 years old but he has a super strong testimony and he might serve a mission so that would be awesome!

Hope you all have a great week!

Elder Pollock


​Meet our cat Pancho, the Snow Wookie



 

 

These flowers are common in Chile, but they`re pretty cool

It was our mamita`s birthday, the member who cooks food for us everyday, so we bought her a cake and made her banana pancakes since they don`t know what those are down here.
 

Week 21

My first week in Chile we knocked a door and the lady was super nice to us and asked us to come back and teach her. We passed by her house like 10 times, but she was never home or she was alone, and we can`t enter a house when there`s a girl by herself, unless we bring a member. Finally, after many attemps, we passed  by her house one last time, this time with a member, and she was there with her 2 daughters! They really want to learn more and they are a super awesome family. We have an appointment with them next week again!

Lasy p-day, we spent like 2 hours in the hospital visiting elder Wilson, who had been in the hospital for 5 days at that point. He had a pretty serious infection in his digestive system, lost 20-25 pounds in a week, and the doctors said he easily could have died. We are all super happy, because he toughed it out, stayed in the mission field, and he left the hospital a couple days later after a long stay in the hospital. He`s doing a lot better today, and even played a little basketball with us today!

This p-day we got up early and ran, played hacky sack  basketball with like 8 other missionaries, and then got some pizza! It was a fun day. It`s always fun to relax a little bit after giving 110% every day of the week for the mission work. 

Our normal schedule is 

7:00-8:30 wake up, pray, exercise, eat breakfast, shower, get ready for day

8:30-10:30  Study

10:30-1:00   Missionary stuff (teaching, contacting, giving service, knocking doors, etc.)

1:00-2:00 Lunch

2:00-3:00 Language study

3:00-10:00 Missionary stuff again

10:00-11:00 Get ready for bed, plan

11:00 Go to bed

These pictures are of a cool flower in chile, the pizza we ate, and a cool area we found in our sector

Week 20

Happy Halloween!!!!

Surprisingly, the people here in Chile celebrate Halloween too! The kids all leave and knock doors for candy, just like in the states. The only difference is instead of knocking doors, they knock a rock on a metal fence, because that is the custom of knocking doors in Chile.

We had a costume party the day before Halloween, and then we had a lunch/game/karaoke night Halloween day! My companion and I were at the church from 11:00 in the morning until about 7:00 at night for the lunch activity. It was super fun though, we sang karaoke, played basketball, Frisbee, ate food, talked, celebrated someone`s birthday, jump roped, etc. It was super successful because we had a couple investigators there and less active members who met some of the cool people in our ward!

Here`s a cool story. Before the mission, I used to play a computer game called League of Legends. In the street one day, a guy in his 20`s was walking with his girlfriend to the university. I commented on his shirt, asked him who his favorite character was, asked him what level he was, etc. After that, we had about an hour discussion about the gospel, and he invited us to come over any time to his house! We watched him play League of legends for a little while and then we had another lesson with him. Who would have known playing a video game could help the mission work? Hahah at least I feel a little better now for wasting a lot of time playing video games before the mission...Anyways, that`s about it for this week!

 

May the Force be with you

Elder Pollock

Week 19

I gave  talk this sunday! It was about 20 minutes long and in front of about 90 people. It`s awesome because now i know my spanish is good enough to give that long of a talk. My spanish has been improving a tonnn in the past few weeks.

One thing that was cool, is that we always bring a member to church with us, Pedro, because he can`t walk very well. We push his wheelchair to church. It usually takes like 5 minutes to get there. BUT, this week we passed by, and he wasn`t there! When we went to church, he was there! Apparently he woke up early, and started walking to church with his cane. A trip that would take a normal person 5 minutes walking took him like 45 minutes. It was a pretty awesome miracle.

We had changes this past week, but my companion and i didn`t get changed! So, i have at least another 6 weeks  here in valdivia. I`m happy with that though because the ward here is awesome, we have a mcdonalds and a kfc and a mall here, and we have a lot of investigators and lessons. It would be cool to know another part of Chile though. 

Anyways, that`s my update for the week!

Hasta la vista

Elder Pollock

Week 18

This week was cool as usual! We had a lot of work, but not as much as the past couple weeks. We only had to speed walk between appointments instead of sprint haha.

This week we had exchanges, which is changing companions for a day. It was awesome because for that day i had a latino companion who didn`t speak english and i understood almost everything, and no one even commented on my spanish ability! They only commented on my accent, but they understood me. It`s amazing how fast you can learn a language when you`re surrounded by it. I`ve already learned more than my whole 3 years of spanish is highschool.

Also, i`m officially done with my training! After 6 weeks in the missionary training center, and 12 weeks in the field, you finally finish all the training programs and stuff. 

We also have changes this wednesday, so i might be staying in Valdivia or leave to some other random city, but we don`t know yet! I guess we`ll see next week.

Anyways, i didn`t have much to write, so i just took random pictures and wrote about them!

I`m glad to be out here working in the mission field! I know the book of Mormon is true and that`s why i`m out here. 

Black Falcon out

Elder Pollock

This is the church building our ward goes to. There`s a lot of buildings here in chile. There`s like 3 more church buildings within a 15 minute walking ditance. All the church buildings have huge fences and walls surroundings them to keep out the gangsters and grafitti and dogs and stuff. 

​

This is a pretty typical street here in chile. 

One night we didn`t have a ton going on so we played on a swing set.